Originally published at: What do YOU call these tiny land crustaceans? | Boing Boing
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potato bug
oops, somehow missed it in the list.
consider it my vote.
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If you consider insects, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and millipedes as bugs, I don’t know why you wouldn’t consider these bugs too. They’re crustaceans, but like those other groups things they’ve adapted to land, which is why for instance they don’t have the muscular bodies of lobsters and crabs. Insects actually evolved as land crustaceans too.
I know them as sow bugs and sometimes woodlice here…but then we mostly have Porcellio, which curl up but not actually roll.
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Lizard Food? Bird Lunch?
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In the fourth grade I did a very scientific but collection project, and according my careful research in the Little Golden Guide, it was called a “sowbug,” so that’s what I keyed into my old-school label embosser and stuck to the foam tray where I’d pinned one of the little guys. I was slightly aghast at the lack of academic rigor in the neighbor kid, who had the same specimen, but labeled it with a hand-written tag reading “Rolie-Polie.”
I am less of a prescriptivist as an adult.
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I’m from Oxfordshire, and… ‘Hobbling Andrew’??
I mean I absolutely love it, but I’d definitely never heard the term in all my eighteen years growing up there.
THe further down the list I read, the more I thought I must surely be looking at one of LiarTown USA’s Apple Cabin coupons pages.
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Pill bug or rolly-poley here. Never have I ever tried cooking one, but thanks to this post, I shall remove them from my list.
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In spite of being used colloquially to mean little land-based arthropods, “Bug” actually has a technical definition. It’s a subgroup of insects, including assassin bugs, shield bugs, aphids, and cicadas, among others.
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I grew up in Minnesota. I was taught “sow-bug”, but was familiar with pill bug and roly-poly too.
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Those are the “true bugs”. If you expect bugs to mean the same thing without the word true, you are going to be disappointed as often as not. For most people bug isn’t a specific lineage, it’s a feature.
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The silly little not-bugs unfortunately are not as tasty as their lobster and crab cousins. They’re said to have an unpleasant taste that’s similar to “strong urine.”
Ooooh, yum.
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Roly -Poly. They are isopods!
Never heard it called that… but it is on the list.
These were potato bugs for me:
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Here in the Pacific Northwest, I call them pillbugs.
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Pill bug or Wood lice.
The survival youtubers who try cooking them are a good watch. They all tend to follow this basic plot:
- I have heard these pill bugs are crustaceans, so maybe they taste like shrimp!
- Catch a bunch out of rotting wood
- Cook in frying pan
- Chew on a few of them
- “Nope. Nope. Not like Shrimp. That is not good at all. Don’t think I’ll be doing this again.”
- Some general fluff discussion about how it’s viable “in a survival situation”
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This quasi-alphabetization of this list has me mildly irked and now I see it’s from wikipedia, so I could alphabetize it properly if I wanted. But now I notice a lot of these lack citations, like,
…and now I’m thinking it might be more fun to put my own creations in there, like ‘wee bunbain’
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They’re said to have an unpleasant taste that’s similar to “strong urine.”
And how would one know…Never mind, no “kink shaming.”
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“Menace?!” Is that like calling a fat guy “Slim” or a raving ignoramus “Mr. President?”
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It’s roly-poly. It’s always roly-poly…
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I had this conversation with my wife when we first met. She grew up in potato country and knew the bugs in the picture. She was pretty confused when I called a wood louse a potato bug.
Growing up, I called them either potato bugs or pill bugs until I learned sow beetle. Now I know they’re actually wood lice, but mainly call them roly-polies so my daughter knows what I’m talking about.
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